The Ideologies in

1
The Ideologies in

• D. H. Lawrences
• The Blind Man

from England, My England, and Other Stories
(1922)
2
Leading Questions

• Characters Isabel, Bertie and Maurice. The story
  starts with Isabels listening for two sounds and
  ends with her receiving the two men, seeing one
  fulfilled and one defeated. How are Bertie and
  Maurice set against each other? What role does
  Isabel play in between the two men?
• Spaces and the two trips to the farm The spaces
  in the story are also set in contrast to each
  other. How is the farm different from the house?
  How are Isabels and Berties trip to the farm
  different from and similar to each other?
• The ending What does the mens touching each
  other mean?
• Symbolic meanings the scar, light and darkness,
  cat, touch, flower bowl, etc.

3
Three Levels of the Story Possible Approaches

4
Introduction

• A. structure of the text 1.
  Beginning pp 400 403 So Bertie was coming. .
  . 2nd par. Flashback-The background of the
  story 2. The Present time a. Isabels
  trip for Maurice pp. 404- 406
• b. Maurice in his own room. pp. 407-8
• c. Berties arrival
  Isabel
• d. tea and conversation pp. 409-
• e. Berties trip for Maurice p. 413
  

5
Human Encounters in the Modern World

• Isabel and Maurice post-trauma syndrome
  (depression), isolation and intimacy p. 401
• Berties fear of intimacy p. 401
• What constitute human being besides thought and
  action? There is something else. . .
• Berties lie p. 414

6
Lawrences philosophy

• The brain is. . . the terminal instrument of the
  dynamic consciousness. It transmutes what is a
  certain flux into a certain fixed cypher. . .
  The mind is the instrument of intruments it is
  not a creative reality.
• Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious 247
• For the blood is the substance of the soul, and
  of the deepest consciousness. It is by blood
  that we are and it is by the heart and liver
  that we live and move and have our being, are one
  and undivided. (Apropos 111)
• The blood also thinks, inside a man, darkly and
  ponderously. . .

7
Lawrences philosophy (2)

• modern We always want a conclusion, an
  end.
• Primitive having mythical and symbolic
  consciousness.
• To them a thought was a complete state of
  feeling awareness, a cumulative feeling, a
  deepening thing, in which feeling deepened into
  feeling in consciousness till there was a sense
  of fullness. (Apocalypse 80)

8
I. The primitive man vs. the intellectual man

•  A. Maurice and Berties Differences        1.
  Occupation        2. Appearance M p. 406 B
  409        3. Characteristics M p. 407 B 410
  B. Maurice Blood ConsciousnessC. animal life
  vs. intellectual life darkness vs. light
• The stable p. 405 -- farmers house 404--
  Isabels house 406

9
I. The primitive man vs. the intellectual man

• Maurice symbolic meanings associated with him
  the cat (409, 413) and his touch (405, 407)
• Touches of the flower bowl 409- 410
• The final touches to know each other
•  
• Is Maurice really a primitive man? How about the
  treament of the farmers family?

10
Ideologies (1) primitive man

• Lawrences contradictory ideology of the working
  class and primitive man.
• Sympathetic with the workers, Fascinated by
  primitive culture
• Uses them to express his belief in blood
  consciousness without really understanding them.
• In between working-class and middle-class
  ideologies Does not agree with workers strikes.
  

11
II.  Ideologies (2) Homosexuality

• A. Maurice and Bertiess relationship
• symbols of sexuality e.g. stable, shaking
  hands, pulping sweet roots, the stroking of
  the gray cat
• Lawrences disagreement with homosexuality

12
II. D.H Lawrence's misogyny presented on Isabel

• stereotype of women's pregenancy
• the scene of the reflection in a mirror
• a sense of possession -- burden

13
Dualism in Lawrence

• Dark/light blood/mind animal/insect
• Moisture/dry sensuality/intellect
• Sun/moon man/woman male autonomy/community

14
Terry Eagletons Views Lawrences
contradictions about organicism

• What Lawrences work dramatises, in fact, is a
  contradiction within the Romantic humanist
  tradition itself, between its corporate and
  individualist components. . . . Lawrences
  social organicism decisively rejects the
  atomistic, mechanistic ideologies of industrial
  capitalism, yet at the same time subsumes the
  values of bourgeois liberal tradition sympathy,
  intimacy, compassion, the centrality of the
  personal (p 158)

15
Lawrences Views organicism (2)

• These contradictions come to a crisis in Lawrence
  with the First World War, the most traumatic
  event of his life. The war signifies the
  definitive collapse of the liberal humanist
  heritage, with its benevolistic idealism and
  personal values, clearing the way for the dark
  gods of discipline, action, hierarchy,
  individual separateness, mystical
  impersonalityin short, for a social order which
  rejects the female principle of compassion and
  sexual intimacy for the male principle of
  power. (158)